Daft things that scared you when you were little/still scare you now

[QDRPHNC]

The bit in Superman III when the woman is turned into a robot by the big computer.

That freaked me out too! But for some reason I kept rewinding the VHS over and over again to watch it and showed it my grandad when he came over.

[momatt]

The bit in Superman III when the woman is turned into a robot by the big computer.

Oh god, totally with you there.
It was sort of cool, but being suffocated by loads of wires and metal is horrible.
The woman was quite terrifying before being robotized too.

[Gregory Torso]

The bit in Superman III when the woman is turned into a robot by the big computer. It's well intense for what is basically a kids film. There's some great stuff in Superman III, which is just about outweighed by the nonsense, to make it an average to bad film.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=YuSsSwg9MXs

I also used to be terrified of that bit, the sounds of the wires whipping around her throat, and her eyes going all metal.

Also the Medusa in Clash of the Titans or Jason and the Argonauts, can't remember which, not looking it up to verify, I loved those films, the cool skeletons and cyclops, but the Medusa, fuck no.

[Clownbaby]

I've remembered another one. I don't think it was a straight up fear but I used to go into the pantry and stare warily at a jar of curry sauce that had Loyd Grossman's face on it. I wad about 3. My mam said she went into the pantry once when I was in there, saw me eyeing up Grossman, asked me what was wrong and I said "I'm looking at the man-curry"

[lgpmachine]

I've mentioned this before, I'm sure, but these sequences on Channel 4 Schools gave me the shits as a kid: https://youtu.be/IJEqVxrA80I?t=25s

I don't know what it is, but there was something unnerving about the weird music and the out-of-proportion paintings that scared me. I couldn't help but take my feet off the floor when I watched it just now, too.

Channel 4 Schools had a knack for terror-inducing moments.  A series of stern waxworks set to creepy music? Should be fine.

[Crisps?]

This is basically what my PhD thesis (and upcoming book) is based on... it's funny to think that for you it'd just be an over-verbose litany of horrors!

Heh, a useful list of things to avoid. I actually love the technicalities and artistry of stop motion and would even like to do it myself (if I had the time, skill and patience), but there just seems something off about it. I do think it's the more flickery or jumpy stop motion that I dislike though, and/or maybe the type of creatures used (I loathe the bird in particular in Bagpuss).

If you want to freak yourself, I actually happened to come across a Czech animation from the 60s (Trnka's Ruka) edited to 'O Superman'...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jhHVHTwJBEU

I have video autoplay turned off, so I see the thumbnail before the video is played, and that creeped me out almost enough to not watch. It looked like a weird bald, bug-eyed bird creature with exposed neck vertebrae or trachea (the shadowed ruffle):



The video itself didn't convert me into giving Bagpuss another chance, but perhaps because of the creepiness suggested in the thumbnail I surprisingly quite liked it (even O Superman sounded somehow more pleasant), though while I admire its criticism of state control, it is very sad and disheartening.

[Crisps?]

I probably hadn't heard the song since I was a kid, but a few years ago I heard a snippet of some other song on TV where the tune was vaguely similar to the keyboard part and for the next few days I had that tune as a kindof earworm but I couldn't remember what it was, then after a few days the word Airport popped into my head and I googled it and found the tune.

Might not be the song you heard, but it reminds me of John Foxx's No-One Driving.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4quBLWvzGQ

[The Boston Crab]

Tales of the Unexpected theme. Few years later I found it staggeringly erotic, both the dancing and the sensual lilt of the waltz, the clarinet charming my snake like a riad Maghreb. Now it reminds me of the exponential acceleration of my death.

[garbed_attic]

The video itself didn't convert me into giving Bagpuss another chance, but perhaps because of the creepiness suggested in the thumbnail I surprisingly quite liked it (even O Superman sounded somehow more pleasant), though while I admire its criticism of state control, it is very sad and disheartening.

Ah I'm glad you liked it and thanks for watching (since it's a dispiriting fave!)

Completing the allegory, Trnka died shortly after making it and the film was banned/ locked away until the fall of the KSČ.

I'm def more of a Clangers than a Bagpuss guy. More overtly socialist.

[canadagoose]

Channel 4 Schools had a knack for terror-inducing moments.  A series of stern waxworks set to creepy music? Should be fine.

Jeez, that was scary too. Who on earth came up with that whole theme? Who thought it'd be appropriate for children? Seems so bizarre.

[hedgehog90]

I find the model shots in Metropolis really unsettling.



Also, when I was 12 or 13 I had the telly on while I was doing homework and a documentary about the elephant man came on.
They did a bottom to top pan of this picture:



And when it panned up to reveal the head I immediately legged it out of the room. I got my mum to change the channel for me.
What made it so shocking/frightening I think was the expectation of something a bit more elephanty, if he was called The Tumour Face Boy I would've probably been ok with it.

[canadagoose]

Oh, God, I just remembered something else from the telly that scared me (thanks to hedgehog90 for reminding me). It was around 1994 or so and it was like some kind of animated figure, except it was just composed of clothes, sunglasses and scissors (?!) with the old Border TV logo in the corner. I have no idea why it was there, but Mum said it might have been promoting Edward Scissorhands. I even wrote a story about it in primary school. It was weird.

[Crisps?]

Ah I'm glad you liked it and thanks for watching (since it's a dispiriting fave!)

Completing the allegory, Trnka died shortly after making it and the film was banned/ locked away until the fall of the KSČ.

It's quite surprising something like that was made and released in the first place, though I guess it was around the time Dubcek became leader, so maybe a relatively more liberal period than after Soviet tanks rolled in.

[Scammin]

When I was a boy I used to be scared of Kate Bush (specifically Wuthering Heights) even today the first few bars of the song unsettle me. I have vivid memories of my older brother taunting me that she'd be coming any day to take me away, something that the adult me would be very amenable to.

[garbed_attic]

It's quite surprising something like that was made and released in the first place, though I guess it was around the time Dubcek became leader, so maybe a relatively more liberal period than after Soviet tanks rolled in.

I mean it wrong-foots the censors *a little* with the images related to American imperialism on the TV set buuuuut not really that much. It's bracingly blatant! True of The Party and its Guests if you've seen that one too.

[Chairman Bodog]

I don't fuck with ghosts unless they're made up enough. I do get down with spirits and not the downing kind. My mate used to live up Blaenavon and we camped at the punchbowl, a cracked valley for fishers. The whole aura of that joint was all off. A malevolent emanation. Not the "I'm on my third joint and those corgi-mounted faeries are giving me the shakes" way. The air was lilting and everybody's hairs were on edge. We heard whispers all night and since we:re stimheads we always lowed it as head games but we saw and heard things together that were as clear as open shade. Fucking sketchy space. When I was 16 I ripped a bowl of 120x Salvia and I felt dwellings being fashioned on my skin. Ever since then I began respecting autonomy behind collective cells and dissipated consciousness. Not a soul because morality doesn't exist. I'm really fucking drunk but i implore any campers out there to scrutinize the air and ambience with hardened heads.

[thraxx]

Oh yes, the opening sequence to that American sci fi programme The Invaders. The doomy tone about aliens disguised as humans and the way they died by turning red and disintegrating scared the living shit out of me. Proper hide behind the sofa shit.

[doppelkorn]

Loads for me.

To this day I'm not great with anything to do with amputations, but the scene in Forrest Gump where Lieutenant Dan loses his legs scared the living shit out of me. A few years later as a teenager I was watching it with some mates and I "went for a piss" to avoid that scene again. Still never seen it.

I was a massive X-Files fan but to be honest I used to watch half of it between my fingers. I would have been about 13 as well.

We also had an Alice in Wonderland book and the bong-smoking caterpillar in that scared me. Although the Disney one didn't.

Speaking of Disney, the donkey scene in Pinocchio. Fuck me - the way the little boy-donkeys scream for their mamas :( I just watched it now and Pinocchio really reminds me of my son with his wide-eyed innocence. Ok, all kids are like that, but you project, don't you? Again as a teenager, I remember waking up at my mate's house hungover and his little sister, who would have been about 3, was happily watching Pinocchio while two us lads sat there traumatised out of our minds.

[flotemysost]

The horrifying cunt pacing up and down throughout one level of the otherwise excellent Atari game Mouse Trap (at 4:47 minutes in, here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3rkLDeZouaU). Made all the more scary by the fact that if he spotted you, you were a goner.

Another disturbing Atari gem was when you hacked off your opponent's head in Conan the Barbarian, then a weird little frog-man would come and kick the severed head away. Although I think even aged 4/5 I found that one quite funny.

[littlenell]

Children of the corn, or something with a similar title.

Basically a film where a few kids are playing on a farm, and one by one they die farm related deaths.

I saw it on daytime tv when I was about 10. It horrified me, and still does really.

That, and the threat of nuclear war. When I was 13, it was 1986. The cold war was at its worst ebb in my lifetime, and films like threads etc kept being shown. I expected to see a mushroom cloud every evening as I looked out of my bedroom window.

[Dex Sawash]

All of HR Pufnstuf but especially this

[Jumblegraws]

Children of the corn, or something with a similar title.

Basically a film where a few kids are playing on a farm, and one by one they die farm related deaths.

I saw it on daytime tv when I was about 10. It horrified me, and still does really.

Sounds like you're referring to Apaches, a COI film about the dangers of playing on farms. Relive your memories on youtube https://youtu.be/UAQZaUixmpA

Incidentally, the actual Children of the Corn movie is pretty crap.

[Malcy]

Still don't trust these bastards...

[littlenell]

Sounds like you're referring to Apaches, a COI film about the dangers of playing on farms. Relive your memories on youtube https://youtu.be/UAQZaUixmpA

Incidentally, the actual Children of the Corn movie is pretty crap.

Wow, thanks dude. I watched the link just long enough to identify  it, ha ha still scares me shirtless. You're the only person who has ever known what I mean when I've described it.

[littlenell]

Still don't trust these bastards...

Oooh no, why would you? Are they Doctor Who baddies? Cos in 1978, when I was 5, Dr Who was terrifying.

Carry on screaming...watched as a 5 year old and found it hair raising. Still wary of watching it.

[Malcy]

Oooh no, why would you? Are they Doctor Who baddies? Cos in 1978, when I was 5, Dr Who was terrifying.

Carry on screaming...watched as a 5 year old and found it hair raising. Still wary of watching it.

Shop window dummies. Used to terrify me after seeing that at about 4 years old. Still give them a second look just to make sure. When I started buying the Who DVD's I bought that one first just to prove they weren't that scary. I was wrong!

[non capisco]

'Spearhead From Space' in total, but especially the sequence when those fuckers smash their way out of shop windows and start staggering down the high street, is still an amazing bit of television. I love all of the first Jon Pertwee series of Doctor Who to friggin bits, there's a tantalisingly pulpy and lurid quality to it that Doctor Who never quite achieved again, but that serial is exceptional. First series in colour, shot on film instead of video and they decide to hit you with that terrifying carry on. Shop window dummies coming to life, for crying out loud. Everyday humdrum mundanity turning evil, sleep well kids. A masterstroke.

[Captain Z]

these mooks? really?
pretty awful one-hit bollocks only in the charts because of some long-forgotten commercial... the noise at the beginning was an accident that they kept, as I recall...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XCbAEkfXSDE

The beginning section is of course one of the pretty cool remixes by Arthur Baker/Zupervarian which then slows down into the original Babylon Zoo version. It will probably interest nobody but there are several variations of the remix: 'Arthur Meets The Spaceman Mix' is a slow version of the breakbeat track with the vocals at their original pitch. The 'Zupervarian Mix' is the fast version of the breakbeat track with the vocals pitched up (as used in the well known radio edit), the chorus works but the verses sound terrible so I guess that's why it never became the radio version. The '5th Dimension Mix' is an instrumental version of the fast breakbeat track. There are others which just seem to be variations using different amounts of vocals. If you want my advice, the unofficial 'Go Home Productions Edit' does a nice job of chopping them into the definitive version of the remix.

[manticore]

'Spearhead From Space' in total, but especially the sequence when those fuckers smash their way out of shop windows and start staggering down the high street, is still an amazing bit of television. I love all of the first Jon Pertwee series of Doctor Who to friggin bits, there's a tantalisingly pulpy and lurid quality to it that Doctor Who never quite achieved again, but that serial is exceptional. First series in colour, shot on film instead of video and they decide to hit you with that terrifying carry on. Shop window dummies coming to life, for crying out loud. Everyday humdrum mundanity turning evil, sleep well kids. A masterstroke.

I was eight when Spearhead From Space was broadcast and it impressed my nightime life with the most shrill dread, worse than the daleks. I find the old Dr Whos mildly amusing to watch now, but I have a lot of sympathy with Nigel Kneale's belief that you shouldn't be making television deliberately to put terror into children. I don't think the excitement I got from watching it was worth the bedeviling of the endless nights.

[popcorn]

I dread flushing toilets on trains and planes. It's the noise and the suddenness, like opening a portal into another, vicious dimension. Thwack. Dead.